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I have them every now and then but they can be super addictive so it's no surprise it's a habit. I heard it's really unhealthy though and affects your brain cells. Don't know how true that is but I try to stick to water.

Hehe, I share your pain. Here, in convenience stores they cost the same, around R24, but my local supermarket has them for R14, or $1.60. I allow myself 1 or 2 a weekday, and maybe up to 4 on weekend days.

I always start off with good intentions. I have discovered I'm just not responsible enough for that when it comes to monsters. I either have them (and as much of them as I want), or don't. I can just decide not to have them, which is what I did.

I was pretty hooked on them too for a couple years. The caffeine will come back to haunt you. Get off of them. I spent 3 straight days on a couch with severe withdrawal symptoms when I did it, but I've been without them for a good 2 years again and life has gotten a hell of a lot better because of it. My kids tell me I'm much more pleasant to be around and I even though I won't have that caffeine kick to get completely engrossed in work for a 3 or 4 hour span I actually get just as much code written and I have energy to do stuff when I get home.

As reported in this message[^], I had done a fresh install of Win8 onto my new SSD.

Well after about 48 Hours of continuous folding on both the GPU and CPU the machine hasn't died.

So it looks like the previous crashes (after 20-30 seconds of GPU on full load) were a software glitch, and not a GPU card or PSU or other hardware fault that I had begun to suspect (well convinced it was hardware more like)!

Well at least it's OK now? When I rebuilt my machine I had a bad mobo and a bad memory stick that just about caused me to lose the rest of my hair and I used a number of stress programs; Prime95, Orthos (I think) and some others but it's been a long time and I don't remember all that I used but the point is they really helped me reach a level of frustration I had never felt and fixed my unit.

What size SSD are you using and how did you configure it? I'm looking to get maybe 128GB to start with, just to run the OS and important stuff off, but I'm starting to wonder how to set things up between it and the HDD, especially for a recovery scenario where the SSD moves on the drive bay in the sky, and I want to revert to booting off my HDD.

Just installed it as the primary drive and installed everything as normal. Then plugged in the HDD that had all the data on it, reconfigured the page file to use the HDD, then copied all the My Documents etc. back across to the SSD as a temporary measure.

I am planning on shifting the My Documents back across to the HDD and/or move to my NAS. (Once I was happy I copied everything I needed across, reformatted the HDD to remove the original partition and the hidden system partitions created when windows was installed on it originally). After reformatting, rejigged the drive names to re-order the hdd and dvd drives.

So far it is great and windows 8 isn't that bad once you get used to them moving stuff around etc.

Phone call from someone at Barclaycard fraud dept calls. And says I need to confirm some activity on my account, but first need to go through some security questions.

I stopped him in his tracks and asked how I do I know he is from Barclaycard. He gives me some waffle and then tries to go through security checks. Asked him again, "how do I know you are from Barclaycard?". Still couldn't give an adequate answer so told him I would phone Barclaycard directly.

So I phone barclaycard, ask to speak to the fraud department and sure enough, they had put a lock on my account.

Now the fun began, Security questions. Now the last time I phoned I didn't have the correct answers and ended up having to go into a Barclays branch to confirm my identity. Anyway, sure as sh!t they start by asking "In july, which electronic company did I make a transaction with?" JULY??? I can't remember who I have purchased what from in the last week, never mind July (and could I find a paper statement). So, they moved onto some other questions like, which address is familiar (from a list of 5), then they gave me a name (happened to be my brothers), and asked which age group was that person in, finally gave me a list of female first names and asked did any of them have any relevance.

Getting through that lot, they go on to ask about the transactions, one was a authorisation check for 0 from a major online retailer, the other was a payment into the account, which I had then to log into my current account to find the amount. That was it!

The whole process was just a load of cr@p, from the guys strong foreign accent, and a typical crackly call centre line, to the transaction checks...

I can remember now why I don't use it very often and got another card from another provider!

Yeah, I had a call from my banks "security team" a month ago. Only they start with an automated system for you to prove your ID with. So I assume it's phone phishing, and hang up.When they eventually talk to me direct, they get most surprised that I want them to prove they are who they say they are and refuse to deal with them until they do. Which of course, they can't, unless I prove who I am to them first - which I won't do since they phoned me.

Eventually went into the branch, and it was genuine! They had locked my account, frozen the card, and blocked a number of fraudulent payments.

But it still annoys that I have to prove to them who I am, when they rang me, but they won't prove to me who they are.

Ideological Purity is no substitute for being able to stick your thumb down a pipe to stop the water

So I finally decided to use my real name today on Code Project after having used a handle for more than 5 years "gladiatron"! to be honest, when i first joined CodeProject I really didn't intend to use it quite that much except for one-off code-problems and I actually didn't for around 4 something years.

Only since last year, I have been a more active member of CP helping with peoples' problems, posting questions, commenting in The Lounge etc...and with my first article debut on CP today, I thought it makes perfect sense to unmask the name and come out with my real name.

I happen to think that using your real name (as many of the top guys here do) gives more credibility to your views and ideas. People often tend to look at handles as something of a non-serious time-killing joker. And I am nothing like that . I feel, real names also engender an unspoken trust that the person participating in the community is not a sham and is serious.

So there you go, I am Aman (trust me that is my name and yes I am a man as well, so my name perfectly re-affirms my gender ) and pleased to meet you all again and I really hope to contribute even more in the coming days, weeks, months and years. Do share your experiences and views in this regard, I would be glad to hear them.

I happen to use as close to my real name as I could get: all the variations I could find on Paul Griffin were taken by the time I signed up.So, I ended up with a handle.I don't think use of a real name gives any credibility - I think it is the quality of your posts that does that. I can think of people who use their real name who shouldn't be allowed near a computer, much less listened too...

Ideological Purity is no substitute for being able to stick your thumb down a pipe to stop the water

I agree with that! I suppose if anyone is in doubt of anyone's credibility, they should look up their reputation points that should allay or confirm all the doubts forever. "You don't get to 591K points without being credible". Cheers.

That's what wives are there for i suppose, keep us men grounded in reality. Man - "honey, look at this, I have been consistently ranked as a Top Expert on Code Project" Wife - "eermmm, no surprise you have been wasting your time on bloody CP when you should be fixing that broken sink that's been broken for around a week now"...*Man hangs his head in disappointment*

Oh, we changed that too, the red pill now means you are a democrat, and the blue pill will turn you into a republican... So both will make you able to see how deep the hole is, just from two different perspectives, sort of as it is in the world today

"I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible."- Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004